


covered in gold

by ghosthunter



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, F/M, Rule 63, andre has two sugar daddies, everyone bones everyone, self-indulgent tire fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 23:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13469160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: Nicke’s drafted fourth overall in 2006. She’s eighteen and she’s going to play in the NHL if not this year, then the next, and she’s wearing eyeliner and mascara and lipstick because her mother made her, and she feels like a different person, certainly not Nicke Backstrom, but someone she doesn’t even know.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to jarka for beta and to donya for cheerleading (and ideas). apologies to connor mcdavid for cutting him from the team. apologies to everyone else for this insanely self-indulgent mess.
> 
> there are two parts to this - one that's more world-building (this first one) and one that is more a set of different vignettes (chapter 2). you can read them in either order.
> 
> title from palace by hayley kiyoko, because gay.

The first year women are allowed to apply to be drafted into the NHL, only one is selected in the draft. It’s a controversial decision in the first place - purists don’t want to see women playing with men. There are reasons sports are divided into leagues by gender. There’s a whole litany of reasons not to draft women, because they’re too soft, too gentle, not strong enough to play with the men. When the rounds pass and none of the girls who have applied are drafted, no one is surprised. Two hundred and ninety-one players are drafted; the only girl goes 279th.

It’s different going into 2005. It’s different because this year there are more eligible female draftees, but also because the top prospect is one of them. No one is going to turn down Sidney Crosby just because she’s a girl - she’s too good. She doesn’t play like a girl. She’s not the first woman ever drafted, but she’s the first drafted first overall, and she becomes the first to play on an NHL team, going straight onto the Penguins the season after she’s drafted.

Nicke’s drafted fourth overall in 2006. She’s one of two women drafted, both in the first round. It’s the Capitals’ captain himself who announces her name, who pulls the jersey over her head. She’s grinning, breathless, her face flushed - fourth overall! - and he’s grinning at her as well. She’s eighteen and she’s going to play in the NHL if not this year, then the next, and she’s wearing eyeliner and mascara and lipstick because her mother made her, and she feels like a different person, certainly not Nicke Backstrom, but someone she doesn’t even know.

She doesn’t imagine the way his hands linger a little too long for just pulling on a jersey. She has to take pictures, then, posing in a Caps snapback and the jersey. It crushes her hair and she’s a mess by the time they turn her loose. Certainly she doesn’t expect him to wait for her, but he does, and she slips away from her dad and brother under the guise of going to talk to someone who has actually played their first year in the league so recently. Her brother makes a snide comment about them being able to even have a conversation (“he barely made it through announcing your name!”). English isn’t Nicke’s first language and she doesn’t speak a word of Russian but she’s pretty sure that it’s not going to be a problem.

She’s no blushing virgin and it’s not like he’s the first hockey player she’s ever hooked up with. She prefers them, actually, because they get it, get _her_. They know what it’s like to be an athlete, to push your body to the limit, to maybe not be the sexiest thing in the world all of the time. Nicke doesn’t think of herself as particularly sexy, ever. She knows what men see, broad shoulders and thick thighs, no makeup - and not in a cute, ha ha I have on foundation and mascara and lip gloss kind of way, but in a blonde eyelashes and chapstick kind of way - and messy hair. Ovechkin pulls her hair anyway, and leaves a faint bite mark on her neck when he fucks her.

Nicke goes back to Sweden after the draft, and she keeps playing in Elitserien. She sees Ovechkin again, playing at the World Cup. Honestly, she expects him to blow her off - they’re not on the team together yet, they have no real rapport, they hooked up once and haven’t spoken since. Instead, he pulls her in and poses for pictures with her. They’re both sweaty and disgusting, and it makes her smile. She almost feels like she can’t wait to get to Washington, and see what playing with him is like.

They call them the Young Guns - Nicke, Ovechkin, Mike Green and Alex Semin - and they drag the team to the playoffs Nicke’s rookie year, first in the division before they lose to the Flyers. (The Flyers, where Claudia Giroux plays, and Nicke can’t even enjoy the fact that Giroux only plays two games with the club that season, because they knock the Capitals out of the playoffs. Fuck the Flyers.)

She lives with Michael Nylander that year as well, carpools to and from the rink with him, plays ping pong against his kids. She’s pretty sure that William either hates her or is in love with her, or both, all at once. He spends a lot of time storming away from the ping pong table. She spends a lot of time skirting curfew to fuck Mike Green.

Nicke likes Mike because he doesn’t expect her to be his girlfriend. They room together on the road, and nobody bats an eyelash. After all, Sidney Crosby rooms with guys on the road because she’s the only girl on that team, so why not Nicke? It makes Ovechkin laugh - he’s met Crosby, and he’s pretty sure that she doesn’t have sex with anyone, much less her teammates. He doesn’t call her frigid, but only because he probably doesn’t know the word.

Later, in their hotel room, Nicke asks Mike if he thinks that’s really who Crosby is. Mike shrugs, because he’s not an idiot, and he’s not going to talk about another woman while he’s got one in bed with him, and he doesn’t want to have this conversation with her while he’s working his hand between her thighs, fingers wet.

“I want people to think that about me,” she says, letting her head fall back, tangling her fingers into Mike’s hair, tugging as he catches her nipple between his teeth. “I want them to think I’m cold. Then I’ll destroy them.” Mike laughs against her breast, raising goosebumps all over her body.

Nicke’s reputation is thus: incredible passing, cool, calm, collected. She lulls people into thinking she’s the quiet one, standing in Ovechkin’s wake, because nearly everyone would be considered quiet standing next to Alex Ovechkin. Nicke never stops talking shit, dressing down anyone who comes within earshot, worming her way inside their heads. Do they want to get knocked down by a girl? Do you wanna fight a girl? Get your ass kicked by a girl? The best thing about being female is that they underestimate her.

The truth is: she’s just as tall as many of them, she’s just as heavy as many of them, she’s just as hard to knock off the puck. She’s a better player than most of them, she’s fast and she’s smart and she’s got great instincts. Players forget they’re supposed to be watching out for Backstrom, too, in the face of the freight train that is Alex Ovechkin. None of them can say she’s too soft, or that she doesn’t work hard. They never forget that she’s a girl. It would be better for them if they did.

The Capitals go on to draft their second female player ever in 2009. It’s been five years and women are still pretty much a novelty - even in spite of the elite players that have already been drafted, in spite of Crosby being captain of her team, in spite of Crosby captaining her team to the fucking Cup. Women just don’t play the game in the volume that men do, and maybe for now, being drafted in twos and threes are all they can expect.

Johansson is different from Nicke in a lot of ways. They’re both girls, they’re both from Sweden, but that’s pretty much the end of their similarities. Actually - no, it’s not the end of their similarities. They’re both masters of deception. They both lead people to believe they’re the quiet ones - Nicke is quiet and cold and overlooked, Johansson is quiet and shy and too soft.

None of it is true, of course. Nicke gets along with Johansson like a house on fire, because Nicke is the first one who notices that shy little Jojo is the first one to snark someone when they’re being an asshole, standing in her bra and compression shorts in the locker room, her hair matted sweaty to her forehead, her cheeks red, and her eyes bright. It’s Greenie she snarks, and he looks at her bewildered for a split second before turning to Nicke and saying, “I can’t believe there’s two of you,” and Nicke’s not sure if it’s awe or horror.

They get the glimpse of the real Jojo in the locker room, but Nicke sees the real girl underneath the hockey player on their first West Coast road trip when they end up in a bar with a man who asks them if they’re bodybuilders. It’s just the two of them, a study in contrasts where Nicke’s concession to going out is brushing her hair and Jojo’s got slick glossy waves of hair hanging around her face and red lipstick (“Capitals red,” she tells Nicke in the hotel room, when she’s putting it on).

She ends up smearing that lipstick across the guy’s face, leaving Nicke sitting alone at the bar. Later, at the hotel, she drunkenly complains to Nicke that if she could let herself be the girl who hooks up with guys in bar bathrooms, she would have done it, because she’s dying. She complains that she hasn’t gotten laid since before the season started - going out and picking up is too much work, and she doesn’t want the guys on the team to see, or worse, watch, especially if she strikes out.

Nicke laughs at that, because she’s just watched Jojo pick up - she knows that there’s game there, because it wasn’t like the guy was unattractive. Nicke just shrugs then, and admits that she’s been fucking Greenie off and on for the past three years. Maybe Nicke wouldn’t even admit it, but they’re both drunk. Greenie on the regular, Ovi occasionally, more often than not at international tournaments. Hockey players, she explains, and Jojo breathes a sigh of relief.

“It’s not, like, taboo, then?” she asks. And Nicke remembers, then, that Jojo is just a rookie who played in Sweden the season before, and things are different. North America is not Sweden, and the face of North American hockey right now is Sidney Crosby. Nicke shakes her head and Jojo fist-pumps - honestly fucking fist-pumps right there in front of Nicke and God himself.

Then it’s Jojo’s turn to admit things, which is that she thought she was giving up hooking up with hockey players when she came to the states to play - she’s cocky when she says it, because come on, Nicke, she was captain of her WJC team, she could nail anyone she wanted. Nicke laughs at that, and “seriously,” Jojo insists.

NIcke’s never even kissed a girl, in spite of every name she’s been called because she’s never tried to present herself as feminine. She’s heard guys on the ice saying the same shit to Jojo, though, so Nicke isn’t sure it has anything to do with the way she looks, so much as she’s a woman playing against men and it’s the only thing they can think of to call her besides a bitch - they’re hockey players, all of them, not rocket scientists. Ovi’s the smartest hockey player she knows.

Making out with Jojo isn’t that much different from making out with anyone else, only maybe there’s a lot more hair involved. It’s all the same once Jojo’s hand is between her thighs - the only difference is that the noises Jojo makes when Nicke fingers her are better than any noise she’s ever heard Greenie make, and she’s heard him make quite a few. She whimpers when Nicke makes her come, digging her fingers into Nicke’s wrist and writhing against the mattress, and Nicke thinks it’s the best thing she’s heard outside of a goal horn.

She doesn’t date Jojo any more than she dates Greenie, in a sense where she has relationships with them, has casual sex with them, and - she wouldn’t call herself anyone’s girlfriend, really. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Probably. Maybe? It’s just that Jojo stays with Nicke a lot, and they go out to dinner together a lot, by virtue of sharing a common native language but also because they’re the only girls on the team. NIcke’s still hooking up with Greenie on the regular, and she cat-calls with the guys the first time Jojo picks up and leaves with a guy from a bar.

They spend a lot of time together, is all. Nicke’s the better cook, and Jojo doesn’t complain about doing dishes as long as she gets a free meal. They’re not living together, because Jojo keeps her own space. It’s where she goes after their periods sync up and she ends up getting irritated and telling Nicke she’s being a huge bitch and storming out - which she calls and apologizes for later. Nicke, for her part, actually cries about it, which she honestly fucking hates, and who said hormones could be like this, anyway?

Burakovsky is an anomaly, still. Nicke is pretty sure that Burky has never had an emotion that hasn’t been fully on display, or thought of a thing that she wanted that she didn’t go out to immediately get. While Nicke has always been subtle about what she does and who she sleeps with, by the end of Burky’s first full month on the team it’s pretty obvious she’s nailed both Wilson and Latta, possibly both at the same time. She’s got them both wrapped around her little finger in no time.

She lives with Nicke but Nicke only ever sees her if there’s actually food being cooked. The rest of her time she mostly spends with Wilson or Latta. Wilson and Latta. Nicke’s pretty sure they’re a package deal. Meanwhile, Nicke gets bored going shopping with Jojo because she’s going through, like, a lingerie thing. Which, it’s all well and good if she just wanted to wear cute bras and matching panties, even though Nicke herself could give less of a shit about a bra, but Jojo really only wants them because she and Kuznetsov are currently doing some kind of weird mating dance.

NIcke tells Greenie as much, and he just laughs, and tells Nicke that she can’t expect everyone to be like her, to just say what they want. Nicke points out that actually, Burakovsky is exactly like that, but Greenie logically counters that Jojo never has been.

By the next year, Greenie and Latta are both gone, and more often than not, all three Swedes are sticking together. Ovi makes one joke about sleepovers, and all he gets for his efforts is Nicke bouncing him off the boards in practice hard enough to make him yelp, hard enough that Trotz yells “Backstrom!” so she feels sufficiently admonished.

The truth is, it is almost like a sleepover, except half the time it’s Burky interrupting something that’s half started between Jojo and Nicke. For all she’s one of the most open women Nicke has ever met about her sexuality and sex life, Burky hasn’t exactly picked up on some of the things going on under her nose. She seems totally oblivious to the fact that she’s fully interrupted them, even though Jojo’s answering Nicke’s door because she’s the one with the most clothes on and Nicke is literally not even wearing a shirt.

The third time it happens, Jojo’s the one who cracks. “Burk,” she says, staring Burky down as she stands in the living room. “If you don’t stop fucking cock blocking us, I’m going to kill you.”

It’s an empty threat, because Jojo will wreck someone on the ice but she wouldn’t actually kill a man, probably, except for that one time in a bar in Texas when Nicke almost had to carry her out of a bar because of something a guy had said to her.

The realization hits Burakovsky like a ton of bricks and she says, “oh,” her eyes wide. Nicke’s sitting on the couch, half covered in a blanket - the half of her that’s naked - and Burky looks from Jojo, to her, and then back. “Oh,” she repeats. Jojo’s hair is a mess from Nicke’s hands, and her lipstick is smeared. It could not _be_ more obvious. Burky, knowing she’s beaten, turns around and flees.

It’s a while before they actually talk about it, during which time Jojo comes to Nicke and says, “I think Burk is trying to sleep with me,” and during which Nicke notices that Burky’s attentions toward the two of them have ratcheted up significantly. She definitely hasn’t stopped sleeping with Tom, but he’s mellowed, Nicke thinks, since Latts isn’t there to egg him on, so maybe Burky is just branching out because she’s some kind of monster sex fiend.

(When Nicke expresses this to Jojo, she gets a grunt and a pillow in her face for her troubles, and then Jojo promptly steals the entire duvet by rolling herself up in it. Nicke could roll her off the bed, but she knows she’s not going to unroll 200 pounds of bad attitude from her blankets. She’s also not going to deal with whatever is making Jojo unbelievably fucking cranky, either, so there’s that.)

“What if,” Nicke says one night, sitting in a hotel room, splitting a bottle of pretty terrible wine they’ve picked up from a liquor store a few blocks down the street from the hotel, “I actually did sleep with Burk?” Jojo grimaces, and Nicke isn’t sure if it’s because the wine is that bad, or the idea of fucking Burakovsky is that bad.

She doesn’t say anything after, and Nicke considers laying into her for whatever not-dating bullshit Jojo’s currently doing with Kuznetsov that’s irritating not only Nicke, but also Ovi, who has more than once come to Nicke to complain about it. Nicke told him it wasn’t her problem. He implied she should make it her problem. Nicke told him that unless it affected their game, she didn’t give a shit what they did.

Ovi had told her she was a terrible assistant captain, and she’d thrown a sneaker at him and told him that she was an assistant captain on the ice, not in anyone’s love life. If he wanted to meddle, that was up to him - he’s the romantic, anyway, not Nicke. Nicke’s not out to play matchmaker with anyone.

Burky tags along with them to dinner so often that it’s routine, and she makes the mistake of saying she could out arm-wrestle either of them one night, which is bullshit, and both of them prove it to her. It all ends with her pinned to a hotel floor by Jojo, both of them panting, Jojo flushed from her cheeks all the way down her neck like she’s just double shifted.

She looks so hot, her hair a mess, a little sweaty, that Nicke pulls her up off the floor and kisses her right in front of Burky, digging her fingers in hard to the meat of Jojo’s hip as she drags her in close, making her gasp. Burky’s on her back on the floor and Nicke’s tongue is in Jojo’s mouth and then Jojo’s hands are untucking Nicke’s shirt to slide her hands underneath and - 

Burakovsky clears her throat. She’s still on the floor, looking up at them, and they both stop what they’re doing to look at her. “Um,” she says. Jojo drops back to the floor, bracing herself against the bed to lower herself down. “Do you want me to kiss you first?” she asks, looking at Burky. “That’s what I did with Nicke.” This seems to rob Burakovsky of her power of speech, and even though she has her mouth open, she doesn’t seem to be able to make words come out.

So Jojo kisses Burky, soft, and Nicke watches with her own bottom lip caught between her teeth. She’s never been much for watching someone else having all the fun, but she doesn’t mind the way Burakovsky looks with her head thrown out and her knees spread wide with Jojo between them. Nicke is intimately familiar with what Jojo looks like when she’s going down on someone, her eyelashes dark crescents on flushed cheeks, but it’s a different angle, and Nicke has never seen Burky like this, her head thrown back and her lips parted, fingers tangled tight in Jojo’s hair.

More often than not, Nicke wakes up in the night too warm, with Burky curled around her and Jojo’s back pressed against her side. Her bed is big enough for three, with room left over, and still Burk clings to her like a life raft. She supposes it’s okay, because at least now she’s warm when Jojo inevitably steals all of her blankets. It’s a fair trade for when she wakes up with Burky’s mouth on her breast or Jojo’s fingers in her hair.

It takes Nicke months to realize that they’re actually dating. They are legitimately going out on dates, the three of them, kissing each other goodnight in hallways. They buy cupcakes for Burky and take them to her at her apartment when she’s stoned out of her mind on painkillers after she breaks her hand blocking a shot. They both kiss Jojo in the middle of the locker room, in front of god and everyone, including Leonsis, when she scores the OT GWG in round one. That one nearly starts a riot with the catcalling and wolf-whistles, but all three of them are screaming too loudly to care.

They both show up to Nicke’s house after Sweden wins the world championship, and celebrate by having enthusiastic sex and then by bullying Nicke into something “nice” to go out and celebrate, and Nicke even borrows lipstick so that they all look like they could eat any man who looked at them twice alive - and they could, probably. Jojo doesn’t talk to either of them for nearly the entire month of July, after she gets traded, and Nicke feels like she should have been better prepared for it, after Sasha, after Greenie. She wasn’t. She’s not.

It’s the business, Nicke knows. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck. It just means that they have to work harder for the things that they want. She sits on Jojo’s couch with Burky’s head resting on her thigh, running her fingers through Jojo’s still practice-wet hair. It’s up to Jojo, now, what she wants to do - if she wants to stay with them, keep whatever they’re doing going long distance, or if she wants to give it up, go out on her own, maybe find someone new. She doesn’t want to decide, not now. Burky wants to push, but Nicke puts a hand on her head and she goes quiet.

Finally, she says, “you guys should do what you want.” It’s a brave thing for her to say, a girl who was drafted by the team, who has played there for seven years, and who’s still practicing with them in her black helmet and shorts. The girl who says she’s grateful for the opportunity and excited to play with a new team, but who Nicke knows cried saying goodbye at the rink, even though she tried to keep everyone from seeing.

Nicke loves her, and when she says that much, Jojo shakes her head. And Nicke means it in so many different ways - her girlfriend, her friend, her partner in crime, her teammate, but she knows why Jojo doesn’t want to hear it, right now. It’s letting go, for all of them, with vague promises to come by the new place when Nicke and Burky are in New Jersey.

She gets up and goes to the rink early some mornings, leaving Burky asleep in her bed, and they both work out late at night. She puts in the work because she wants to win. She wants it for herself, she wants it for the team.

Nicke doesn’t like not getting what she wants.


	2. Chapter 2

**i. alexander the great**  
“... the Washington Capitals are proud to select …”

All Nicke hears is a rush in her ears after they call her name and she stands up, sliding out of her suit jacket and running clammy hands over the front of the skirt her mother bullied her into wearing. She’s smiling, her face flushed. She’s breathing too hard as she makes her way up to the stage, a little too stiff in the way she holds herself.

It’s Alex Ovechkin who announced her name, and Alex Ovechkin who pulls the jersey over her head. It’s Ovechkin’s hands lingering on her back as he helps her tug the jersey down, and it’s definitely not her imagination. She doesn’t have much time to think about it, though, because they’re tugging a snapback down over her curls and hustling her off to take pictures.

Sure, maybe it’s stupid of her to take those hands on her body as an invitation, but she can’t help herself. She makes stupid excuses to her family - Ovechkin has played a full season with the Caps, she wants to talk to him, and she doesn’t care how hard it’s going to be because she doesn’t know Russian and he barely speaks English, shut the fuck _up_ , Kris.

She certainly hasn’t misread him, because Ovechkin lights up when she meets him in the hotel lobby - neither of them old enough to get into the bar. She’s changed clothes but she’s still got the snapback on, crushing down her hair. They do talk about hockey. Ovechkin tells her how excited he is that the Caps drafted her, and that she’s going to be coming to play with them. Is she sure, he asks, that she wants to play another year in Sweden before she comes to the NHL?

Nicke is sure, but she tells Ovechkin he should make his case, convince her, which is how she ends up in his hotel room, her hat and his shirt discarded on the floor next to the bed, her panties off and her skirt pushed up around her hips and doomed to wrinkle irreparably. She lets him go down on her until she’s writhing on the bed, until it’s clear that he’s not going to get her off that way, before she tugs on his hair.

“Take your clothes off,” she tells him, and she pushes herself up off the bed, unbuttoning her shirt and pushing it off her shoulders. He moves to her, slides his hands along her ribs to the back of her bra to unclasp it. He pushes the straps off her shoulders, following them with his mouth, following the cups away from her breasts. She’s beyond foreplay, pushing her hands into the waistband of his pants, digging her fingers into the meat of his hips. “Off,” she repeats, and tugs at the waistband. She knows he fucking knows what she means, because he’s fucking smirking at her. He’s teasing her. She pushes at him.

She strips out of the rest of her clothes, and she sits naked on the bed, resting one hand against her own thigh, wanting to touch herself almost as much as she wants him to fuck her. He’s stripping down, a good boy with condoms shoved into his suitcase that he brings back to the bed.

“If you don’t hurry, I’m going to do it myself,” she threatens, and he laughs then. He’s taking his time with condoms, and she stretches back on the bed, propping herself up against the pillows, watching him. She stops waiting for him, touches herself while she watches him slide the latex down his cock, biting down on her lip. He moves between her thighs when he’s done, pulling her hand away and replacing it with his own, making her lean her head back and close her eyes with a sigh.

He fucks her hard, one hand braced on the headboard and the other tangled into her hair, her hand between them to get herself off. When he comes, his teeth scrape across her collarbone, leave a mark. It’s low enough that hopefully no one will notice it. She comes with a gasp, digging blunt fingernails into his shoulder.

She has to go back to her room, so there’s no romance after, no cuddling. Nicke isn’t interested in that, anyway. Maybe one day, she thinks, lying breathless in the bed as Ovechkin cleans himself up. She follows him into the bathroom, washes her face and smooths down her hair before she pulls her clothes back on. He kisses her when she goes to leave, like he wants to have a second round with her.

“I’ll see you around,” she says, and he’s laughing when the door closes behind her.

 

**ii. to russia with love**  
Nicke goes to Russia to play for Dynamo because Ovi asks her. And asks her and asks her and asks her until she finally caves just because she’s tired of hearing it. He loves her, Jojo tells her. Nicke’s not sure that’s true, unless it’s not in a romantic way. Ovi’s a romantic, but he’s never directed the force of that feeling toward her.

She loves him, too, in the same way. That’s why she goes, instead of drifting back to the SHL, because she loves Ovi, the hockey player, loves playing hockey with him, and because he asked her. Because he loves Nicke, the hockey player, just as much. They’re hockey players first, and people second. But Nicke thinks she probably loves Alexander, the person, as much as she loves Ovi, the player.

Nicke’s Russian is abysmal at best, so she lives with Ovi because it’s frankly easier than trying to get by on her own when she only knows bits and phrases and swear words that she’s picked up from him and from Semin over her years in the NHL. She lets Ovi take the reins and focuses on playing hockey. That’s what she’s in Russia to do - play hockey.

She ends up sleeping with Ovi, again. It’s not like her draft day was the only time, but it’s only intermittent. Nicke's not sure they’re entirely sexually compatible, but there are times - well, he’s the only person she knows who’s ever legitimately gotten their dick pierced, and who was she to turn down an opportunity to experience that?

In Russia, it comes down to familiarity. Familiarity, and trust, because she wouldn’t expect anyone else to make sure she got home safely after drinking too much vodka with an unfamiliar team. Nevermind that it was actually Ovi’s fault she drank too much to start with, because he’s a terrible influence. He takes her home and makes her drink water until he declares she’s allowed to go to bed, like he’s the boss of her.

In the morning, he makes breakfast for both of them, which makes her smile. She can smell coffee, which is her biggest interest. She’s a little hungover, and her mouth feels gross. She brushes her teeth, then goes out to the kitchen.

She perches on the counter and sips a cup of coffee, watching him. “You want eggs?” he asks her, and she looks at him for a moment, trying to decide if she’s going to get sick if she decides she’s going to eat. Finally she nods, and he hands her the plate that he’s already finished. She slides off the counter and grabs a fork from the drawer, going to sit at the table.

After breakfast, she’s planning on going to the gym, to run the fog out of her brain, but he stops her on the way out of the kitchen, one hand warm on her waist. It’s an invitation, and she melts into it, leaning her body in against his. And she’s never gonna be the girl a guy carries to bed, or over the threshold, not at her height, not the way she’s built. Instead, he wraps an arm around her and takes her back to his room.

He’s good enough to her - they’ve known each other long enough and been together enough times that they’ve had the chances to learn what the other likes. Nicke remembers when he had no idea how to get her off with his mouth, and it’s a thought that flashes briefly across her mind as she twists her hands into his hair as he goes down on her. She knows where and when to dig in her teeth to make him yelp. He knows how to make her come, gasping, babbling his name.

She still wants to go to the gym, get in a real workout, but it’s a day off, and it doesn’t hurt anything to lay curled with him in bed for a while, to doze a bit. He’ll get bored of it before she does, and get up and do something else, but it’s nice for a little while.

 

**iii. road roomies**  
Nicke could be subtle if she wanted to be.

She has been, the past few months, even, subtly dropping hints that Mike could absolutely fuck her if he wanted, but either he’s oblivious, or he doesn’t want to. So she stops being subtle, and strips straight out of her game day suit in front of him, giving him a full view of her naked ass as she bends down, sliding her socks off.

Greenie’s standing in tiny hallway by the bathroom in their hotel room, his mouth hanging open.

“Um,” he says, and she can see that his brain is fully shorting out. She straightens up, and she smiles at him, predatory.

“What?” she asks him.

“Sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean to look.” He trips over half the words, but she understands what he’s saying.

“I wanted you to,” she tells him. “Or I wouldn’t have done it.” Years of playing hockey have made her less self-conscious about the way her body looks, at least in most situations. The way Mike is looking at her now lets her know that she’s got the control here.

“Oh,” he says. His mouth is still open, his eyes still wide.

“Greenie,” she says. “I’m trying to get you to fuck me.”

“Won’t Ovi be mad?” Greenie asks, and Nicke laughs, crosses the space between them and grabs him by his tie.

“You’re an idiot,” Nicke says. “Ovi’s not my boyfriend. And I was trying to be subtle but you weren’t taking the hint.”

“Oh,” Greenie says again. “I mean. I. I was noticing but I thought - well, Ovi - and -”

“Are you gonna take your clothes off or not?” she asks him.

Mike almost chokes himself getting out of his tie.

 

**iv. bigger in texas**  
“Excuse me?”

Nicke’s head snaps around when she hears it. She hasn’t heard what was said to prompt it, but she knows that tone in Jojo’s voice. Jojo gives off a quiet, sweet vibe, but she’s still a hockey player, and she doesn’t take people’s shit. Especially not some cowboy dudebro in a bar in fucking Dallas, Texas. Right now, Jojo is staring at the dudebro, all wide brown eyes and flushed cheeks, and Nicke wonders how much she’s had to drink.

“I said,” the dudebro says, and - God, he’s about to repeat whatever he said, he’s really going for it. It’s not even a good insult and Nicke knows Jojo’s heard worse, but Dallas has never been kind to them, and they’re out to unwind. He’s not helping.

Nicke reaches out and lays her hand over the back of Jojo’s, covering the yellow-purple bruises of a still-healing slash with her own hand once she sees Jojo’s hand start to ball into a fist. Jojo turns her head slightly and looks at Nicke, her eyes a little glazed.

“We should go,” Nicke says, and the dudebro laughs. He doesn’t know when to quit, clearly, even though Nicke’s stepped in and is trying to diffuse the situation.

In the next breath he insults both of them, and suddenly Jojo’s off her barstool and Nicke’s got her around the waist and she’s yelling, a long string of profanity that comes out in both English and Swedish and, when she runs out of things to call him in those languages, Russian and, as a last resort, some Czech.

She’s in the middle of telling him what she thinks of his dick when Nicke wrangles her out the door. Nicke gives her a hard shake then pushes her against the wall just outside the door of the bar, and the fight seems to go out of her when her back hits brick.

“You’re drunk,” Nicke tells her.

“Yeah,” she admits.

“You’re ready to go home,” Nicke says. She means the hotel, but Jojo has a funny sort of look on her face after Nicke says it. “I swear to God, if you start crying right now - “

Jojo laughs then, leaning forward and pressing herself against Nicke. “Take me home,” she says, whispering into Nicke’s ear. “Make me forget all this bullshit.”

Nicke obliges her.

 

**v. girls like girls**  
Burky is on her knees on the floor in front of the couch, her tongue poked between her lips as she concentrates. Nicke’s pretty sure that Burky thinks that it helps to lean to the left and the right along with her controller. The only thing it helps with is when she leans over and impedes Jojo’s view of the TV, which earns her a swift shove to the side with Jojo’s foot while Jojo yells at her.

“I need the advantage!” Burky yelps.

“I need to be able to see!” Jojo yells back.

“No you don’t!” Burky says. “You practice when I’m not around.”

“She doesn’t,” Nicke says from where she’s curled up on the armchair with her phone, watching them. “You just suck.”

“Ha,” Jojo yells, then kicks her foot out and knocks Burky’s controller out of her hands. Burky immediately turns to attack, her controller forgotten on the floor. She’s taller than Jojo, but Jojo holds Burky off with her legs long enough to kill Burky’s avatar and let out a yelp of victory before she’s overcome and pinned fully beneath Burky’s body. “Nicke, help,” she says, her voice muffled as Burky mashes her face into the couch.

“Do you know that I have a bruise on my thigh from where you hit me with a tape ball yesterday,” Nicke says, not bothering to move. She does snap a couple of pictures and send them to the group chat, letting everyone know that for once Burky is winning a wrestling match.

“I can’t breathe,” Jojo is protesting, which is not really a defense of why she can throw a wad of tape MLB-hard with precision accuracy and did so to Nicke. Nicke probably shouldn’t let Burky kill her, regardless.

“Let her up,” Nicke says. “But watch your back.”

Burky eases off, one knee on the couch between Jojo’s thighs. Jojo pushes herself up, wiping her hair out of her face, which is red from exertion. “You left a welt on my ass with your towel,” Jojo says. “Or I wouldn’t have thrown my tape at you.”

“Poor baby,” Nicke says unsympathetically. Jojo grimaces. Her hair’s a disaster, and she’s sweaty, untangling herself from Burky and pushing herself up. Nicke watches as she untwists her t-shirt, then pulls the elastic out of her hair to smooth it out. “Did I leave a bruise?”

“I don’t know, I don’t look at my own ass,” Jojo says, and Nicke watches as Jojo’s fingers make quick work of re-braiding her hair.

“Want me to look?” Burky asks, grinning. Jojo grabs the throw pillow and whacks her in the face. In the ensuing scuffle, they crash down onto the floor, and Nicke winces, because she doesn’t want to explain how her teammates ended up hurting themselves wrestling in her living room. 

They struggle until Jojo pins Burky to the floor, her hair a mess again and her hands holding Burky’s hands pinned to the floor above her head. They’re both breathing hard and staring at each other when Nicke snaps a photo, sending it to the group chat with the message that things have returned to status quo. It’s just seconds before Jojo leans down and presses her mouth to Burky’s, and Nicke knows that’s an end to video games for the night.

 

 

**vi. for the gold**  
Nicke’s on the first plane out of the United States after locker cleanout, ready to put the loss behind her and to throw herself head-first into something else. What she gets is William Nylander.

She’s still trying to break herself of thinking of him as the kid she used to beat at ping pong when he was a kid and she was living with his father her rookie season in Washington. It’s still a struggle, sometimes, to reconcile the Willy she remembers from that time with the player on the ice against her in Round 1, or the player on the ice with her now.

Working together - working with him now, feeding him pucks so that he scores, scoring herself from his assists. Their on-ice chemistry is incredible. It’s so good that Ovi, back home in DC, texts her constantly, chirping her about robbing the cradle.

Willy tells her about being a pre-teen and having the biggest crush on her, and she laughs it off even though she can feel her own ears getting hot. She tries not to think about it too much, but she sees the way he’s watching her and - apparently so can other people, if the increasingly agitated texts she’s getting from Jojo are any indication.

_should you be telling me this?_ she texts back one night after a game.

_as your friend, i’m telling you to nail him_ Jojo tells her. _as your girlfriend, i’m still telling you to nail him_

Nicke almost calls Jojo after that one. Instead, Sweden goes on to win gold and Willy almost kills Henke Lundqvist tackling him after the shootout with utter disregard for the state of Henke’s knee. Gabe jumps in the jacuzzi in all of his gear, and each member of the team is more drunk than the last. And Nicke scored the game winner in the shootout.

“Come on,” she says to Willy, her mouth all but pressed against his ear, still wearing her under armor, reaching down and tugging him up, out of the jacuzzi. “Before you get too drunk to get it up.” Willy laughs, delighted, and lets her pull him out of the jacuzzi. Either nobody realizes they’re leaving, or they don’t care. More likely, they don’t care, and Nicke and Willy won’t be the only ones getting each other off before the night’s over.

Everything’s loud and covered in champagne and there aren’t a lot of places they can sneak off to - Nicke thinks she wouldn’t be the type to hook up in a bathroom stall, but when they get interrupted in the stairwell, Nicke thinks that the family bathroom down the hall from the locker room might not be such a bad choice.

They’re both sweaty and nasty and sticky from champagne sprayed all over them, and every single second of their mouths fitted together tastes like sweat and Gatorade, but Willy tugs her shorts down off her hips and lifts her up onto the edge of the sink. She twists her fingers too-hard into his hair and pulls him in against her, trapping him between her thighs with his wet shorts still on and his dick hard against her.

They’re both sore and near-exhausted, but adrenaline keeps them going as he fucks her, his hand between them and his fingers on her as she pulls his hair and bites at his mouth. He makes a startled noise when he comes, and she half-laughs at him, breathless as she tells him not to stop.

In the morning, he falls asleep on her shoulder in the morning on the plane to Sweden, and she runs her fingers through his hair while he’s snoring gently through his hangover.

 

**vii. three**  
It’s abundantly clear that neither Tom nor Mike has ever lived with a woman before and even though Burky isn’t, like, a girly girl (as Latts tells her one morning as they’re passing each other at the bathroom door), she’s still a girl.

They don’t stare at her in the locker room but she definitely catches Latts staring at her in the kitchen one morning as she’s making herself breakfast. She’s wearing shorts, but the top she has over them is basically see through. She doesn’t think about it until Latts is already staring at her. Oh well, she thinks. He can look if he wants to.

“You want some breakfast?” she asks him, and enjoys the way he sputters and stutters before stammering out a yes.

Tom is more forward, but no less awkward. It doesn’t matter, really, because Burky’s decided to make a play for him, since he spends as much time watching her ass as Latts does staring at her tits.

She flops down onto the couch next to him as he’s playing Call of Duty one night, hooking her legs over his thigh and tucking her toes under the other. To his credit, he doesn’t move or flinch, his face a mask of intense concentration where his tongue pokes slightly between his lips.

“Tom,” she says after a moment. She doesn’t know where Latts is, but it’s probably easier to move in while he’s not there. She suspects - no, she knows - that they’re a package deal. They’re best friends. She wants both of them.

“Hm?” Tom says, not turning to look at her. She’s wearing the same top she had on in the kitchen the day Latts stared at her tits. Tom’s not paying attention to her at all, and she doesn’t like it.

“You’d have sex with me, right?” she asks.

Tom’s on-screen avatar promptly gets shot as he startles and the controller fumbles out of his hands. He turns to look at her, his eyes wide.

“Uh,” he says.

“Like,” she says. “I’m hot, right? I mean, even though I’m a hockey player?”

“Yes,” Tom says, his voice unsure, like he doesn’t know where she’s going with this.

“So you would, right?” she says.

“Uh,” Tom says again.

“Tom,” she says.

“Are you serious right now?” he asks her.

“Unless you don’t want to?” she says. “Maybe I’m misreading the way you’re always staring at my ass.”

“Oh God,” Tom says, and his face flushes red.

“Latts stares at my tits,” she says. Tom closes his eyes and tips his head back, looking like he wants the floor to open up and swallow him. “I mean, you guys wouldn’t be the first hockey players I’ve hooked up with. But you’d be the first threesome.”

“What,” Tom says, his head jerking upright from the back of the couch, his eyes wide.

“I mean, unless you don’t want to - “ she starts, but he shakes his head.

“No, no, I - “ He fumbles for words. “If he - does he.”

“Let’s ask him,” she says, and leans over to pick up Tom’s phone.

She wakes up sandwiched between them after that, more often than not. Tom sleeps on his back, her head resting on Tom’s shoulder, with Latts pressed up against her back, his arm thrown around her waist.

 

**viii. victoria’s secret**  
Jojo is great at flirting.

She thinks, anyway, but Kuznetsov is either not interested, or not picking up what she’s putting down. She talks about it so much that she’s lost count of the number of times Nicke has smacked her with a pillow and told her to shut up. Nicke also tells her that she just needs to make a move.

The truth is, it’s going to be weird if she gets shot down.

It’s not that she just wants to sleep with him. She likes him. Like-likes him. She’s pretty sure she’s a complete idiot for it, too. Nicke’s irritated with her because Nicke says she’s pining. She’s not fucking pining.

It finally happens after a game. It’s maybe not a great game, but Jojo scores two goals and it’s pretty clear that Kuzy is working his ass off to get her the hat trick. They eke out the win and have an early bus call, so Jojo’s just planning to head to bed if she can ever stop buzzing.

She’s sitting on the bed in nothing but her hoodie and panties, texting Nicke when there’s a knock on the door. She almost falls over trying to get her sweatpants on and get to the door. She’s not expecting to find Kuznetsov on the other side.

“I tried,” he says to her by way of greeting.

“Thanks,” she says, a little confused.

“Not just for hat trick,” he says. “But for ignoring you flirting with me. Is probably a bad idea.”

“Oh,” she says. So he had noticed, but he’s not interested. That feels like shit, actually.

“But,” Kuznetsov says. “I’m here anyway.”

“Oh,” Jojo says, and it has a completely different intonation this time as realization dawns. Yeah, he said it was a bad idea, but he’s also standing there, his hoodie half-unzipped over his bare chest, and she wants to slip her hands in.

So she does.

He crowds into her space as her hands ghost across his ribs. She has a second thought for the fact that she literally went out and bought cute underwear for this seduction and this is actually happening in her hotel room on a roadie and she’s wearing sweatpants and not even a cute bra for him to take off. Instead it’s her sweatpants and hoodie he’s stripping her out of as she leans back on the bed, and her panties are stupid printed cotton ones.

She’s not sure he’d care if she had on cute lingerie, anyway. He seems more intent on kissing the bruise that’s already on her hip from a blocked shot that night as he tugs her underwear off, anyway.

She wakes up in the morning to him tracing lazy circles on the bare skin of her back, and he smiles when she tips her head up to look at him.

So yeah - she definitely like-likes him. Jury’s still out on if that makes her an idiot.

 

**ix. zuccarello all-stars**  
Communication has been quiet between them since the beginning of July. The summer is always a little quiet, even though they’ve been together, and Nicke’s thought of Jojo as her girlfriend more often than not the last couple of years, but it’s been radio silence since right after the trade.

Before they get to Norway, the last time Nicke had actually talked to Jojo, Jojo was crying. It wasn’t an argument, but it wasn’t a great conversation, either.

Let me know when you land, is the text Nicke receives when she turns her phone back on after her plane touches down in Norway.

Just got here, she texts back. She’s sure they’re staying in the same hotel, but she doesn’t know. Let me know where you’re staying.

It takes a while before Jojo texts her back, but they are at the same hotel. Nicke sends, do you want to get dinner?

Yeah, Jojo sends back, and then her room number.

Nicke drops her bags in her hotel room and washes her face, changing out of her travel clothes into something different. She feels like she wants to take Jojo out for something nice, since it’s the first time they’ve seen each other since Jojo was traded, but she also doesn’t want to text her and ask her to dress up or anything like that. She can’t even guarantee that Jojo brought anything like that with her.

It’s good to see Jojo, no matter the circumstance. She lets Nicke into the room and they stand there for a second, before Jojo just leans forward and Nicke wraps her arms around her.

“I’m sorry,” Nicke says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. She’s afraid Jojo’s going to start crying or something. They stand there for a while in silence with Nicke’s arms wrapped around Jojo, and Jojo’s face pressed against Nicke’s shoulder. When Jojo lifts her head up, she’s not crying. Her hair is shorter than when they were in Scotland, and her face looks thinner.

Nicke cups Jojo’s face between her hands and kisses her. When she pulls away, Jojo exhales in a sigh. “Let’s go to dinner,” she says, and doesn’t meet Nicke’s eyes.

It’s awkward. Of course it is, because they’re having a conversation but Jojo seems far away already, and Nicke doesn’t know what to do to pull her back in. “Come back to my room,” she finally says, and Jojo even hesitates at that when Nicke knows that normally she wouldn’t.

“It’s weird,” she says, once they’re in Nicke’s room. Nicke opens the bottle of red out of the mini bar, and they drink it out of plastic cups.

“I know,” Nicke says. “It’s gonna be weird not having you around.”

“It’s going to be weird being there and not knowing anyone,” Jojo says.

“You’re okay?” Nicke finally asks. Jojo shrugs.

“I wasn’t,” she says. “It was a shitty thing to do. I mean, not to trade me, because that’s whatever, but to do it while it was the middle of the night for me. But now?” She shrugs. “A lot of them have texted. It’s probably going to be okay.”

“Probably?” Nicke asks. Jojo shrugs again, but doesn’t say anything else, turning the little plastic cup around in her hands. “You got a breakup haircut.”

Jojo reaches one hand up, runs her hand over her hair. “Yeah,” she says. Nicke is quiet, sets her cup down on the nightstand.

“I’m going to miss you so fucking much,” she says, and reaches out, taking Jojo’s cup out of her hands. “You’re my best friend.” She kneels on the mattress, takes Jojo’s face in her hands again, and kisses her.

“You’re going to make me cry and I’m gonna be pissed off,” Jojo says, once Nicke pulls away.

“Shut up,” Nicke says and kisses her again.

 

**x. tough love**  
Nicke wakes up to someone banging around her kitchen.

Burky is banging her way through making breakfast in what must be the loudest way humanly possible. Nicke knows that Burky’s being deliberately loud, looking for attention, wanting Nicke to love her and make her feel like she’s not absolute garbage because she was the night before’s healthy scratch.

“Burk,” Nicke says, and the look on Burky’s face when she turns around is despondent. Nicke feels bad for her, but there’s not anything Nicke can do.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says. “I don’t know how to change anything. I keep practicing and practicing and it’s not. What am I doing wrong?”

“Please don’t,” Nicke says, stepping forward. She’s never been good at dealing with people who are crying, least of all Burky. “It’s going to be okay. It was okay last year, wasn’t it?”

“But it keeps happening!” Burky says, and her voice is getting louder and oh God, she really is crying. Nicke wraps her arms around Burky and rubs her back.

“You just have to keep working,” Nicke says. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“I’m so tired,” Burky says.

“Go sit down. I’ll make breakfast,” Nicke says. “Then we can… I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“I feel like I should be going and working,” Burky says. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Yeah, but you know better than to push your body like that,” Nicke says. “So take advantage of the day off. I’ll even go shopping if you want.”

“You hate shopping,” Burky says.

“But would it cheer you up?” Nicke says.

“I don’t know,” Burky says, her voice a whine.

“Okay,” Nicke says, and takes a deep breath. She exhales. “How about we go out for breakfast, then you can decide if you want to do anything else.”

“Okay,” Burky says, sniffling.

“Go wash your face and get dressed,” Nicke says. “I’ll clean up in here.”

Burky goes.


End file.
